Condemned to Death

by Cora Harrison

  ‘Definitely his,’ said Cormac instantly. ‘Look how new-looking it is. That has not been there long. Don’t know how we missed it this morning.’

  ‘Just the sort of thing that a man from Galway would have worn.’ That was Cian’s contribution.

  ‘Very fine,’ said Art.

  ‘It does look like something belonging to the gold merchant, doesn’t it, Brehon,’ said Cael.

  ‘So he went in here, into the underground room, and then where did he go?’ Domhnall was considering the matter.

  ‘You don’t think that the treasure was here?’ Cael was more pleased than disappointed. Both she and Cormac were pinning their hopes on the ancient house on the beach, with its conveniently placed iron pot.

  ‘I think that Niall Martin came here, looking for the treasure, but I’m not sure that he thought it was the right place.’ Mara cast her mind back to the map that the gold merchant had drawn. Certainly Lios na hAbha had been marked on it, but when the man realized how far from the river it had been placed – well, he would surely have known that no flood could have swept any gold from that underground chamber.

  ‘I wonder where he went next, what do you think, Cael?’ asked Cormac, showing an unusual deference to another scholar’s opinion. He looked all around, starting from the far side of the strand where the boat with the body had been beached, moving past the pier and the up beyond the high-water mark and then focusing on the broad sweep of the dunes that fringed the golden slope.

  ‘What about there,’ said Cael, instantly, pointing to the far side to the river, to the place where the Farmer Michelóg’s land began.

  ‘I’d say you are right,’ agreed Cian. ‘Have we searched that side of the river properly? Has anyone gone there? If we haven’t then we should start on it straight away.’

  ‘Cael and I will do it,’ said Cormac. Mara was surprised that her son wanted to give up on his special discovery of the old house with the pot beneath the slab. However, it was typical that he got bored easily. Sifting endless grains of sand was not an occupation that appealed to him, though, she thought, if they persevered they would have come to bedrock. No one would have built a house on sand. And then when she thought about the building of the house, she remembered the custom on the Burren, when building a new house, of placing a broken iron pot beneath the flagstone in front of the fire. Then during a ceilidh, the best dancer would be given the honour of that particular spot where the sound of his or her feet echoing above the music of pipe or fiddle would keep the time for less accomplished performers.

  That would, thought Mara, be the explanation for the pot beneath the slab and she was glad now to see Cormac directing his attention in another direction. She seated herself on a rock, taking out Niall Martin’s map again and studying it carefully and then looking all around her, trying to picture the gold merchant’s last hour.

  Not night time, she thought. Even moonlight, adequate for fishing, would not be enough for a search for buried treasure, but sunrise would be an ideal time, and, no doubt, a bed of hay in the roof space of an old house would not be a great place for an elderly man to spend the night.

  And why did he do it?

  Michelóg had said to her with an appearance of candour that gold was of no interest to him, that he had neither wife nor child, and wanted, in the way of cattle and land, no more than he already possessed. But surely if that was true, the same applied to Niall Martin.

  Or did the glamour and lure of gold act upon all men, irrespective of whether they needed it or not? Mara was inclined to think, despite Michelóg’s words, that it did.

  So Niall Martin emerged from his uncomfortable sleeping place at night, came out upon an immaculate beach of orange sand, made his way to a place not yet searched, and found the gold, stood contemplating it. And then? And then, another person who could not sleep, so far faceless in Mara’s mind, came upon him and struck him down and fled with the gold.

  But who was the person appointed to take him back to Galway? It was ridiculous that she still had not found that out. It would not have been Michelóg, she guessed. He would not undertake long trips to Galway when he had cattle to see to, so it must have been one of the others.

  At that moment there was a shrill scream from Cael, followed by a whistle. Mara got to her feet quickly. Domhnall and Slevin emerged from the underground passageway of the ruined enclosure and Finbar, Art and Cian came running down from the promising bend in the river that they had been investigating.

  ‘I saw the footsteps,’ shouted Cael. ‘I was the one that saw them first. And Cormac thought that they were just belonging to Michelóg, but I said that they were too small and they have no hobnails in them like farmers always have and the fishermen don’t wear boots – they wear cuaráin.’ Cael, as usual, presented her evidence in a cool, succinct manner. Only the glow of her eyes showed her excitement. She waited until everyone’s attention was on her and then said, ‘But that is not all. Look!’ Walking carefully well to the side of the footprints she made her way up the steep slope towards Michelóg’s farm. As they got nearer they could hear the muffled thump of the hammer on the bark of the exotic tree trunk, but no one spoke and the noise went on without hesitation.

  Outside the farm, just at the spot where there was a field of delicate grass, just where the land was watered by the River Caher and enriched by thousands upon thousands of baskets of seaweed, heaped over it by generation after generations, there was a bank that formed the boundary. It had been dug to form the base for a wall and a ditch showed where the sandy earth had been taken. Part of it looked newly turned over, but the section where Cael was now scooping over with her hands was heaped up with a pile of sand that looked as though it had been taken from the nearby dune. It only took her a moment to move it aside.

  And there was a pile of clothing and a small empty leather bag with two handles and a lock. There was a hat of black silk – and it had two purple tassels remaining on it. There was a tunic of black broadcloth, thick and expensive, and trimmed with velvet, finely knitted black nether hose, and a pair of smallish leather boots with smooth soles. Typical clothing for a well-off merchant. Mara had little doubt that she was looking at the garments worn by Niall Martin on the morning when he was murdered. And, of course, Cael was right. The fishermen wore these light foot coverings, made from a piece of raw cow hide or bull hide, still with the hair on it – these were comfortable when kept wet and were perfect for their work: light in the boats and flexible as bare feet on the rocks. No fisherman wore boots.

  So who had buried the clothes here? Mara looked speculatively in the direction of the farmer’s house. The dull sound of blows had ceased, but a minute later the snarl and squeak of a saw filled the air and drowned the voices of the scholars.

  ‘Was the gold near here, then, Brehon, do you think?’ Domhnall kept his voice low and gestured with a downward motion of the hand to Cael when she began to speak in a high, excited tone, and she immediately obeyed him despite her exhilaration, clapping a hand guiltily over her mouth.

  ‘It all makes sense, Brehon,’ she whispered then. ‘Look, that’s the place over there, across the river, where Séan’s grandfather’s boat was dumped, just there between those two sand dunes. The murderer stripped the body of his English clothes, carried the boat over, wedged it with a stone, perhaps, and then lifted the body in and launched it at high tide.’

  Mara looked at her only girl pupil with respect. That was quick and clever reasoning from a twelve-year-old.

  ‘When was high tide on midsummer’s eve?’ Automatically Slevin looked at Art who immediately said: ‘Would have been about an hour before midnight.’

  ‘And that was the night that there was all the thunder and lightning. Etain was worried about you lot out down in the dungeons. I heard her talking to Fernandez. And there was I stuck in that wall chamber with dear little Síle,’ Cael added with disgust.

  ‘Pity that we were so far away from the river,’ said Cormac, ‘otherwise we might have caugh
t a murderer red-handed.’

  ‘Except that there was no blood,’ said Cian smartly.

  ‘Let’s go back to those clothes,’ said Mara. Art looked a little pale. When he was younger the sight of blood always upset him and though she thought he had outgrown this, it might be still there, though hidden through shame or fear of teasing. ‘I think that Michelóg and Brendan must be asked about them. They are just on the boundary to Michelóg’s land and Brendan’s is not far away. Domhnall and Slevin, would you go and ask them, very politely, to spare me a moment. Michelóg, first, I think, Domhnall and then when he is on his way with Slevin you can go across to Brendan’s place.’ She need say no more, she knew. Domhnall would guess that she wanted to space out the interviews – to confront first one man, and then the other with the sight of the dead man’s clothes and to note their reactions.

  Michelóg, she could have sworn, was stunned at the sight. Stunned and slightly frightened, she reckoned. He was a man who, like the fisherman, had a deeply tanned skin even during the winter and now, in midsummer, was a dark mahogany brown. But he definitely paled at the sight, his skin turning a dirty shade of yellow and his faded blue eyes staring with horror.

  ‘Someone is trying to get me into trouble, Brehon,’ he said eventually and she had a feeling that he was almost pushing the words out. ‘They’re trying to blame me for that death. They deliberately buried the clothes on my boundary. I swear I had nothing to do with it, they’ve got it all stitched up between them. They want me to be forced to sell up this place in order to pay the fine – what would it be, you tell me that, lad, you’ll know?’

  He addressed his question to Finbar who turned red, then white and then said shakily, ‘It would have been twenty-one milch cows if you had acknowledged it within twenty-four hours, but now that has doubled and you would have to pay forty-two cows and the man’s honour price added to that …’ He stared dumbly and miserably at Michelóg who immediately retorted:

  ‘Well, there you are now. My entire herd is only twenty cows. How can I pay that without selling my land and my house and all that belongs to me?’

  ‘No one has accused you of anything at this moment, Michelóg,’ said Mara crisply. ‘What I have asked you is whether you have any knowledge of how those clothes came to be buried here in your boundary ditch?’

  He stared at her with the baffled and angry look of a tethered bull. ‘You know I don’t,’ he said. ‘Why not ask those fishermen? Or Brendan?’

  ‘I certainly will ask everyone,’ said Mara mildly, ‘but now I am asking you. And do I take it that you deny all knowledge of how those clothes got here?’

  He seemed subdued by her tone and nodded his head. ‘I swear I know nothing about them, and nothing about the killing of that man from Galway.’

  She thanked him gravely and watched him walk away. He wore, she thought, the demeanour of a worried man, but not, unless her instinct failed her, that of a guilty man. Her eyes met Slevin’s but it was Cael who said, rather unhappily, ‘I don’t think he did it, Brehon. I think he is stupid and stupid people lie in a stupid way.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Mara and then she hushed them as she could hear Domhnall’s voice chatting about the samphire season in an amiable, but slightly loud tone of voice. She smiled to herself. He was certainly quite a diplomat. He was giving her warning of their approach and the chance to formulate her questions. This time, she thought, she would have a different approach, a different approach for a very different man.

  ‘Stand in front of the ditch, all of you,’ she said quietly and immediately they all lined up: Cormac, Art beside him, then Finbar, then the MacMahon twins, with Slevin standing slightly ahead of the others and taking the eye with his tall figure.

  Brendan, she thought, was puzzled. He eyed the line of scholars and then looked at her interrogatively.

  ‘Yes, Brehon,’ he said. ‘Your young lad said that you wanted me to look at something.’ He gazed all around, looking she thought, over at the other side of the river in a slightly furtive manner.

  ‘That’s right, Brendan,’ said Mara. She turned and then appeared to be surprised at the line behind her. ‘Stand aside, all of you, please,’ she said mildly and then watched him intently when the scholars moved away.

  Well, she thought, he’s surprised, but he’s not in any way as surprised and as shocked as Michelóg had been. She kept her eyes on his face and seemed almost to see his mind shuttling through ideas and coming, she was puzzled to note, to some conclusion. Then he said blandly: ‘Don’t tell me those are the clothes of that poor man.’

  ‘I was hoping that you would tell me since you have often taken him from Galway to Fanore,’ said Mara coolly. ‘I’m sure you remember his clothes.’

  ‘He dressed very fine; I don’t remember these, but they could be the sort of thing that he would wear,’ admitted Brendan with an air of one who is willing to tell all that he knows.

  ‘So you don’t recognize them, but you think that they may have been his,’ stated Mara.

  ‘That’s right, Brehon. They look like the sort of thing that he would wear,’ repeated Brendan. He seemed at a loss for a moment and then bent down and touched the boot. ‘And I’d say these might be his; I remember thinking once that he had very dainty little feet for a fairly tall man, God have mercy on him,’ he finished piously.

  And, at that moment there was a sound of loud deep barking and an enormous dark grey wolfhound came flying across the dunes, cleared the river with one bound and launched himself at Cormac, barking hysterically and licking every inch of bare skin he could discover.

  And after him, breathless and apologetic, came Séanín. ‘I didn’t mean to bring him, honest, Brehon, I didn’t mean it, I just couldn’t get him to go home again. Every time I chased him away, he just took a shortcut through a field and there he was again, running behind the cart. I did everything I could, but in the end I just had to leave him, or I wouldn’t be here for a month of Sundays.’

  ‘Oh, Dullahán, Dullahán,’ said Cormac fondly. ‘You’ve been missing me, haven’t you? You’re such a faithful boy. It’s great that he’s here, Brehon, isn’t it, because me and Art have been training him as a tracker dog, haven’t we, Art. Dullahán will find anything you tell him to look for.’

  Mara stared at the dog with exasperation. Dullahán was now almost two years old and she had almost given up hope that he would ever turn into a reasonable dog, never mind a highly trained one. He had been originally named Smoke by Cormac, but in a moment of fury, when witnessing a row of flourishing cabbages uprooted by a pair of flying paws, Cumhal had named him Dullahán, a wicked god of the Celts, and the name had stuck and suited him.

  As for his ability to find objects, well, if the amount of large holes which he regularly dug in her beautiful garden was any indication then Cahermacnaghten must be filled with buried treasure, which Dullahán sought with immense industry and perseverance.

  Fourteen

  Conslechta

  (Dog Sections)

  1. Any man who kills, without justification, a dog who guards a man’s flocks must pay a fine of five cows, supply a dog of the same breeding and also replace any livestock killed by wild animals until the end of the year.

  2. He who kills a dog of ‘four doors’, that is a dog which guards the dwelling-house, the cow-shed, the calf-pen and the sheep-fold, must pay a fine of ten cows and supply a dog of the same breed.

  3. A man may divorce a woman who neglects her husband’s dog and does not feed it, thereby imperilling its life.

  Wednesday dawned fine and heralded by a bright and clear sunrise without a trace of red in the blue sky – giving the promise of a dry day. Mara rose very early, washed and dressed and went quietly down the spiral staircase, opened the large oaken door and went out into the clear morning air. She was not the first up in the castle. Etain she saw in the distance clambering over the rocks in search of samphire. It had been a late night of celebration at the castle. Unfortunately Fernandez had invited sev
eral members of the clan and their wives, their sons and their daughters to an elaborate feast in her honour and there had been no opportunity for her to talk in privacy with her host. She reminded herself to return to the castle before Fernandez left it. Etain, she thought, must have sensibly slipped off to her bed when she returned from Galway and now was up early and hard at work. Today would be Brendan’s turn to make the journey. What would Brendan do when Etain’s pregnancy advanced to a stage when she was unable to climb rocks and sail a boat? He would have to get someone to help him with the budding industry that brother and sister had set up. Síle was still too young to be much of a help. In fact, thought Mara, compared to the fishermen’s children, Síle was rather spoiled by the two who had been mother and father to her.

  Mara stood for a moment after she had quietly pulled closed the door behind her. There was a wonderful view out to sea from the steps to the castle. She could see the tide coming in and the orange strand half covered with lazy, rippling waves, as she strolled down the steps from the castle, breathing in the very fresh air. She noted that the tents snugly situated in the hollow between the sand dunes were still closed up and that none of the stone fireplaces in front of them were in use. There was one extra tent and a long paw stuck out from it and Mara smiled with amusement, imagining how little room there must be for the original occupants of the tent now that the enormous Dullahán had joined them. Cormac may have been politely requested by the others to take himself and the dog off to the new tent and allow the others to have a more peaceful night.

  And then she frowned with concern. There was one boy not in a tent. He was walking along by the seashore, kicking moodily at the waves, and she recognized the thin form of Finbar. If it had been any other of the boys, if it even had been Cael, escaping from the childish chatter of young Síle, she would not have felt uneasy, but she had been anxious about Finbar all of yesterday. When she looked back on the day, he had hardly said a word, although he had been excited and pleased by his visit to Galway and had been full of talk for the first few minutes when he met his fellow scholars, but then for the rest of the day he had been silent. She wished now that she left him to stay in Galway. However, her duty was to inform his father, who had placed the boy in her care, and get parental permission for this big change in the son’s life.